How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment

used my field notes to probe panelists during the post-deliberation interviews.^40 As a whole, the interviews generated not only ...

dergone profound epistemological changes over recent decades— such as anthropology, English, history, and political science. And ...

the case of ACLS fellowships to full professors). These funding panels serve an important role for evaluators as well, providing ...

five. My French-inflected speech cadence and accent continually re- mind those around me of my otherness. I also conceive of mys ...

Woolgar on circles of credibility and Harry Collins on claims of ex- pertise have been especially helpful.^50 Thus my approach c ...

what reviewers and panel members from different disciplines mean by “significance.” And whereas much of the available literature ...

work. Whitley and Bourdieu tell us that scholars compete to define excellence, and then point to the coexistence of alternative ...

across the social sciences and the humanities. How people approach evaluation as problem solving, how they develop evaluative pr ...

2/How Panels Work I see the need for people to make very careful and [informed] judg- ments for the academic community to functi ...

aspects of panels as a machinery or technology of evaluation around which evaluative cultures are intertwined.^1 This technology ...

of organizational decision making, which considers how decisions that are made by many uncoordinated parties (as is the case wit ...

and the WWNFF programs provide support to graduate students; the ACLS holds distinct competitions for assistant, associate, and ...

cally, strategically, or ecologically quite near. To learn more about values or social conditions in a particular area, then, me ...

Table 2.1 Criteria of evaluation used by funding agencies Agency Clarity Originality Intellectual and/orsocial significance Meth ...

Recruitment and the Role of the Program Officer The evaluation process adopted by the ACLS resembles that of most of the other f ...

ing the organization and distribution of applications. They also preside over panel deliberations, or they appoint a panel chair ...

core, if you will. No one who’s about to push the envelope any- where.” To understand fully the role and influence of program of ...

We try to make sure that our selection panels are composed of distinguished scholars, tough-minded but also broad-minded and pre ...

array of trusted academics and funding agency insiders, survey this network (sometimes through “gossip”) to identify evaluators ...

as in universalism and openness. An alternative model, where panel- ists are selected from among individuals affiliated with the ...